Yay, sequel! I certainly hope it turns out like you originally planned! I'd like to see where this goes in the future.

Busy between school, work, life, games, programming and general screwing around.If you'd like some pixel art for your game, send me a PM, i'll see what I can do.Current project: http://elementalwarblog.wordpress.com/

- AI needs to be tweaked for different attacks.- You can indirectly control units- AI is split between behaviours and tasks.- Tasks are what you tell a unit to do.- Behaviours are how a unit does something.- Squads are a group of units lead by a general.- Tasks are assigned by squads.- The player is the "commander".- You can directly control the commander.- If the commander dies, units panic and run around like retarded chickens*.

Full version:

The original Guardian had some flaws in the AI system. For example, the usage of special attacks was poor. Assassins with their blades would only ever switch to their crossbow during the middle of a fight. You can see why that would fail.

So the first fix I need is different AI behaviours for using special attacks.

Secondly, in Guardian (I), control over the units was not there. Allies would start running back to the tower to put their gold in the chest, but then run back to defend their post. In the end, you needed to push back the enemies long enough for the guard to put their gold away.

So, I need a way to control the units. I am thinking of combining this game with a sort of RTS. In a weak way. I want the player to be able to tell the unit where to go, but I also want the player to be a part of the fight as well.

The AI will be split between two groups: Tasks, and Behaviours.

A task is something you tell a character to do, like charge into the battle, or retreat etc.A behaviour is HOW the character does such a task. eg: An archer when told to defend a point, may run back further and find a good place to shoot from. Meanwhile, a warrior would block the path of enemies until death (or a new command).

I will also introduce squads. A squad will contain a general, and other members. Tasks will be assigned by squad.Squads can be assigned both passive and active tasks. Passive tasks are done when nothing else is needed. Active tasks are done ASAP.

Finally, the player will be able to control 1 unit by themselves. This unit will become the commander. The commander must be alive for the player to be able to give out orders. If the commander dies, all (or most) units will enter "panic mode" and run around aimlessly. The same happens to a squad if their general dies.

There may be a way to have second-in-command to stop units panicking until a new commander is appointed. I will also allow the player to give command to another character (probably the second in command) (in case the commander is critically injured, or an unwanted class).

Hopefully this will create interesting gameplay without removing the player from the action.

(*Retarded chickens may feature in the game. It would make an interesting unit. )

Healer.Heals any friendly units in an area the same size as a warrior's attack by 1 health.

AI:

Added 3rd AI behaviour for all units.

Melee units have Attack and Counter Attack (attack the closest enemy who recently attacked)Ranged units have Attack, and Run Away (when attacked). Random chance to go into panic mode where they run around like retarded chickens . Once in panic mode there is a random chance to get out of it.Healers 'attack' the weakest friendly unit, and run away when attacked (and panic mode too).

Stats:

There are now stats for taking damage, giving damage, kills, accuracy, and healing.There are 5 milestone titles for each category. Some are ridiculously hard to achieve depending on the map and number of enemies.

Notes:

An AI controlled Assassin will beat a player controlled Warrior in a 1 vs 1 fight. When you try to attack, the Assassin slips past you and shoots. When you try again, the same happens. Eventually you die.

Well, for any kind of pixel art...PyxelEdit(I personally use this)GraphicsGale(the free edition is quite powerful, surprisingly)SpriteSomething(iOS, also use this a lot)Aseprite

These are some really handy ones, and all of them support transparent animations.

Busy between school, work, life, games, programming and general screwing around.If you'd like some pixel art for your game, send me a PM, i'll see what I can do.Current project: http://elementalwarblog.wordpress.com/

Yeah, same. I run Ubuntu 12.10 or whatever the latest version is now. But, sometimes I use VirtualBox(i don't prefer wine) to run Windows applications. I also have a separate Windows graphicsing computer sitting there when I need to gfx. I like to split development up onto 2 computers so I don't get caught up doing both at the same time.

I would use Linux Mint (I have dual boot) but the graphics applications suck REALLY BADLY.GIMP is a mess, and is ridiculously hard to use, while Paint.NET is so simple, yet it is at the level of Photoshop.

If only Paint.NET were cross-platform, then I'd use Linux all the time.

On Topic: Skeletons are now in the game. Warriors, Archers, and Spearfighters.

Trying not to derail but what part of GIMP do you find difficult to use?Anyways, the game's looking pretty nice, good work with the animations as usual.

I have tried really hard to make it as close to Paint.NET as possible (even changing all the main keyboard shortcuts) but it still has little things that make it really hard to use.

- Right Click doesn't use secondary colour.- The colour picker doesn't have a switch to Pencil/last tool.- No Ctrl-Select.- Select has to be done from the opposite corner of a pixel or else it does not select that pixel- You can't draw with the arrow keys.

And some others that I can't think of now.You will not believe how much the last one slows me down.

And just annoying things that don't really make it hard to use:

- Select tool has stupid boxes in the corners.- The toolbox is too big and it keeps disappearing when I start drawing.

Basically, in the time it took me to do the skeleton archer (yes, the skeleton archer was made in GIMP), I could have done 3 new skeletons, or 2 completely new units.

When the map is loaded, a whole load of nodes are created depending on the tile and it's surroundings.Solid tiles are left without nodes.Tiles on top of solids are 'ground nodes'Tiles 2 above solids are 'aboveground nodes'Climbable tiles are 'climbable nodes'(There are also nodes for tiles next to climbables, but they are just to allow jumping off ladders)

Each node has rules for which directions it leads to.

Ground nodes can't go down. (Because it would be invalid)AboveGround nodes can't go up (Because double jumping doesn't apply)Ladders can go any direction. (Up down, or jump to the sides)

Of course if there is no node then it can't lead to that direction anyway.

Then it uses recursion + an arraylist to find all the possible paths that lead to the goal. Once it hits the goal, the arraylist is passed back up. Then it is compared to the lists for the other directions, and the shortest is passed up and so on.

Unfortunately, the maximum path length is 10. Otherwise there is LAGGGGG.

The good news is that targeting only works in a 16x16 area, so most of the time it will be fine.

So, what's left until it's playable?Tweak stats on characters.Disable some characters because they're meant to be more powerful (for later in the game).Fix up level chaining so when you win, you go to the next level, when you lose you go back etc.

When will it be available?Send me a PM if you want to test it.By testing, you get to play the game early. One condition: You give (reasonable) feedback on the game, suggestions, ideas, bugs, tweaking neccessary, etc.

Art.No new characters.However, I tweaked the timings, and changed walking to be a 4-frame animation. I am still working on getting the hands of some characters to move when walking.

Currently, the commander controls is just a text user interface which is navigated by using LShift, RShift, Enter and Escape.I can't be bothered to make a GUI yet.

With the current commands, it's possible to create some Awesome attack patterns.

Examples:

- All the warriors lie on the ground, unable to be targeted. If they get attacked, they counterattack until the enemy is dead, and then lie back down on the ground. Good for when you need perfect timing to hide your whole team. Also quite funny if you lead enemies over to the pile of warriors.- All warriors and archers stand their ground on a certain point. Archers will fire whenever a a goblin gets in range, and the warriors pick off any that get through the volley of arrows. Corpse sliding leaves a nice pile of dead goblins behind the group.

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